Michael Chabon

I've just started reading K&C. My friend's gonna lend me "Yiddish etc" as soon as she finishes it. I also picked up "The Road," "Fortress of Solitude" and "The Corrections" today. Chalk it up to panic at realizing that I'm the only guy in the creative writing program that's read one novel from this decade.

Hasn't written another novel as good as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Yiddish Policemen's Union was OK. Not sure that something so plot-driven is Chabon's forte - the best parts of his other novels are when he's fleshing out his characters. When it comes to the action/climax/etc. he has a tendency to screw it up.

With this one the last third isn't terrible (unlike Mysteries of Pittsburgh & K&C), but it's never close to being as good as the first 2/3 of those.

God yeah, Mysteries of Pittsburgh does really go off on one at the end, doesn't it? I liked K&C though.

i adored his short story collections, especially 'werewolves in our youth'

Good choice on Fortress of Solitude, such a great novel.

This is the plot summary of the movie adaptation of Mysteries of Pittsburgh, from the movie website:

Set in Pittsburgh in the early eighties, the story chronicles the last true summer of Art Bechstein's (JON FOSTER) youth. Stuck in a dead-end job working for his eccentric sometime girlfriend Phlox (MENA SUVARI), and forced into an endless series of airless dinners with his mobster father (NICK NOLTE), Art begins to believe that perhaps he doesn't even exist at all.

What begins as a mundane summer is quickly interrupted when he encounters a beautiful debutante (SIENNA MILLER) and her lusty, no good hoodlum of a boyfriend Cleveland (PETER SARSGAARD). Together they reveal a side of Art and Pittsburgh that he has never known.

As the summer boils on and their adventures darken, Art decides to risk everything to preserve his new-found paradise, and thrusts himself headlong into the blurring boundaries of family, friendship, and love.

What the fuck?

WHERE IS ARTHUR?

I can totally see it, some producer dipshit reading the first fifteen or twenty pages of the book and saying, "I get it, I get it! Let's make it. But this other Arthur,? Two main characters named Arthur? Too confusing. And I don't like how gay he is. Let's just get rid of him, it won't change the story all that much."

Sienna Miller, Beautiful Debutante? Not seeing it.

I suppose we won't get the scene of Arthur lubing Art with corn oil.

Kavalier and Clay reminded me of John Irving (and that's a bad thing)

UGH! Thank you for ridding me of the burden of feeling like I should read this comics-related novel. It couldn't have been as disappointing as my realization as a young girl that "Caroline in the City" wasn't actually going to teach me how to become a professional syndicated cartoonist.

Well, according to the plot synopsis, Art has Arthur's job (in the book) at the library, which suggests he is both Art and Arthur. Which means we may be treated to Art lubing himself with corn oil.

Abbott you totally need to read K&C. Not because it's comics-related, because it's really fucking good.

Funny, I hadn't seen Carter Beats the Devil upthread when I revived this. I've been planning on reading it since I was a 16-year-old magician.

Anybody read Yiddish Policeman's Union?

But, but...Irving! He makes me want to do eyes-brooched=out deal.

Yiddish Policeman's Union was OK. Not as quirky as "Jews resettled to Alaska" might appear.

i cannot understand the point in filming Mysteries Of Pittsburgh and deleting all the gay stuff. that's insane.

i still think wonder boys was a fine adaptation, tho.

UGH! Thank you for ridding me of the burden of feeling like I should read this comics-related novel.

I would say do NOT read this book if you know anything about comics history or appreciate actual comics

(I hated it)

But I can never learn to be a world, as Phlox was a world, with her own flora and physics, atmosphere and birds. I am left, as Coleridge was his useless dream poem, wih a glittering sock and a memory, a garbled account of my visit to her planet, uncertain of what transpired there and of why precisely I couldn't stay.

Read K&C, don't really care about it, don't really love Mysteries as a whole...but I love that passage with a pure, pure love.

I would say do NOT read this book if you know anything about comics history or appreciate actual comics

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 9:56 PM

I know jack-shit about actual comics history. What were your qualms with it?

So I'm more sympathetic to Chabon now than I was upthread, at least -- not to the point where I'd say I was a full-on fan, but reading Gentlemen of the Road (v. good stuff) prompted me to go on a bit of a tear on my blog.

You make it sound like Chabon's mostly afraid of the expectations measured against him. Even if the "serious reader" isn't a strawman, they're probably just glad harry potter's putting a spotlight on the form for once.

I picked up GotR at a bookstore the other day and flipped through it, before deciding to put Yiddish Policeman's Union on hold instead. But I never buy new and forgot to ask $$. Now the store's calling me and i'm all "fuck 28 dollas I'll wait for paperback". At least I got the book in stock for them.

just finished Summerland, which i thought was overlong but pretty much a joy throughout. am now borrowing gf's copy of Yiddish Policeman's Union, with high hopes.

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is one of the most well-written novels I've read for years.

you know what he's really bad at?, though? ACTION SCENES. whenever anything important happens, it always stumbles; like he can't handle the synchronicity of action at the same time of character. but yeah, yiddish policeman's union is great and totally made me call everyone sweetness for like six months after.

Not sure I agree with you entirely; the sequence where he's being chased by the fundamentalist nutters while chained to a bed frame was really well done.

i wish i could remember that. i think i read through it pretty quickly. i sort of meant in a broader sense, and as something weirder than it is prominent. off the top of my head i can cite the shooting?, i think?, if anyone even got shot, in yiddish policeman's union, and the pages blowing in wonder boys. maybe it's just the change of pace from largely cerebral, cool observant stuff, to terse action, but he always seemed to be slightly muddled. i liked those few novels a lot, though. less so the ones getting abuse in this thread (sherlock/sci-fi etc)

OK, never read the Mysteries of Pittsburgh, but the film adaptation looks AWFUL:

or maybe that's a gut reaction to indie-looking shit with sienna miller?

I would say do NOT read this book if you know anything about comics history or appreciate actual comics

-- Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 9:56 PM

I know jack-shit about actual comics history. What were your qualms with it?

huh never saw this (sorry Hoos!) The whole tone of it bothered me - all this *wink wink*-nudge nudge-see what I did there!-style of narrative with the sole purpose of cramming the entirety of the history of American comics into a ridiculously brief period involving two people. His two main characters are amalgams of every major comic personality over the last 70 years or so (Siegel and Shuster, Lee and Kirby, Bob Kane, Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, etc.) and it just struck me as stupid and really straining too hard. For example, in K&C we go from yr basic pre-war superhero comic to yr super-pomo-serious graphic novel within the space of two decades. Uh waht. People who know nothing about comics probably wouldn't notice this stuff and it wouldn't bother them but it REALLY irritated me. There's just too much ridiculous about it (to say nothing of the completely random foray to Antarctica, what was the point of that exactly?) The entire point of the book seemed to be to make the history of comics seem cool and interesting to the non-comics reader by truncating and simplifying it and I don't give a shit about that, seems like a pointless endeavor.

end result - I will never read anything else by this guy

idk i mean it seemed to me that the entire point was to give his characters an underexplored fictional mileu to play in. it might seem winky to big comics reader but as someone who isn't one it just seemed like relatively interesting background noise to the character development.

hey shakey good luck reading any historical fiction ever

i know nothing about comics, but the book was way too long for it's own good and i feel like i never got to know the characters that well. the antartica section, especially, felt tagged on. could have just been me though.

? Some of my favorite stuff is historical fiction (Moorcock, Gore Vidal, Naguib Mahfouz off the top of my head)

everyyyyyone tells me to read kavalier and clay but i am highly suspicious for some reason - kinda think this dude is a self-important joker but is it just narcissism of small diffs?

He hasn't surpassed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, but no doubt he doesn't want to be reminded.

he seems to go hand-in-hand with Lethem (who is an infinitely better writer) in terms of nerdy writers that NPR-listeners love but yeah I say stay away

The novel tells the story of Art Bechstein, the son of a mob money launderer who falls into a love triangle with a charming young man, Arthur Lecomte, and a beguiling young woman named Phlox Lombardi. A subplot concerns the highly literate biker Cleveland Arning and his would-be career as a jewel thief

this sounds retarded.

No, it's good: maybe my favorite the-summer-when-everything-changed stories. The period detail, sketches of Pittsburgh, and sexual ambivalence are all well done.

I think he can't quite get over the fact he's supposed to be Mr. Serious Novelist when he just wants to write random genre fiction, though how much of that is self-imposed expectation is unclear. I said more in the blog post I linked a few posts back but I got the sense from his epilogue to Gentlemen of the Road (which I liked v. much) that he feels like he needs to be apologizing to the arbiters of mainstream fiction when I'd like him better if he just out and out said "Screw you, I'm writing what I like," or even better didn't just give a fuck. But his first books set the tone and he has to deal with that.

maybe my favorite the-summer-when-everything-changed stories

I can no longer stand this kind of fiction in general, maybe that's my problem. Although I did think the World of Normal Boys was great.

I think he can't quite get over the fact he's supposed to be Mr. Serious Novelist when he just wants to write random genre fiction,

this seems to be Lethem's problem as well - which is too bad because all of his genre fiction stuff is 1000x better than Fortress of Solitude.

he can't quite get over the fact he's supposed to be Mr. Serious Novelist when he just wants to write random genre fiction

^^^^ this

I mean, here's a bit from that epilogue that stood out:

If this impulse seems an incongruous thing in a writer of the (”serious,” “literary”) kind for which I had for a long time hoped to be taken…

It's like, dude, frickin' relax! Are you afraid the McSweeney's fanbase is going to picket your house?

that is a terribly constructed sentence!

chabon is waaaaaaaay better than lethem imo

and speaking of their genre fiction, i read asylum moon, one of lethem's early sci fi novels, and it was so terrible

amnesia moon

ironic

mysteries of pittsburgh is great. kavalier and clay is great for the first half or so. the jew alaska one is also pretty great but could maybe use some editing. final solution is good.

Lethem's best in short form I think (The Shape We're In, Men and Comics, Wall of the Sky Wall of the Eye, but also particularly fond of Gun With Occasional Music and Girl in Landscape) but obviously our tastes differ. Lethem was one of only a handful of new sci-fi writers that seemed promising to me (others = Matthew Derby, Kelly Link kinda) but now hit seems like he's abandoned the form for good

I can't entirely explain my reactions to Chabon. I actually couldn't get through Kavalier and Clay -- at a time when I still had the patience for translated doorstops and minor OuLiPo novels -- for reasons that are still unclear to me; something about it seemed like a particularly unrewarding chore. For a long time I thought of him as a popular writer who I mysteriously just couldn't get, but eventually I gave The Yiddish Policemen's Union a shot and wound up loving it, so now ... I almost want to go back and read part of K&C to see if I can detect what the difference is, and what it is that made me react so coolly to it.

I loved both K+C (even as a comic book fan), and Yiddish Policemen. But I imagine that has a lot to do with ethnic identity. Ie: I didn't read K+C as a book about comics, I read it as a book about the Jewish immigrant experience. If I had read it more about comics (or maybe just been more educated about comics history, possibly), I may have had a different reaction.

to be honest i barely remember the comics bits of k&c. weirdly enough its probably my least favorite of all of his books and if it was the only one i had read i dont know if i would have bothered reading the rest. but like i said above--i have a lot of affection for mysteries of pittsburgh, yiddish policeman--and also wonder boys! which i forgot but i thought was a great little richard-russo-style crazy-weekend comedy.

I'm with Mordy. It seems weird to see K&C as a book "about" comics - it's about Jewish identity and homosexuality and the immigrant experience, and how comic books, on some levels, articulated outsiderness and a craving for justice. But comics are a way in to the characters and ideas, not the whole point at all. Shakey's seems like a strangely narrow reading. So what if he squeezes Kane, Eisner, Siegel and Shuster, etc into two characters? That's what novelists do all the time, isn't it?

But otherwise, Shakey, I bow to your superior comics knowledge. Can you recommend a decent, entertaining history of the medium so I can join up some dots? I love the Fun Home/Maus/Daniel Clowes side too but to be honest I'm more interested in a history of the superhero stuff - the pop side. The Watchmen movie, and Jonathan Ross's amazing Steve Ditko doc, have sent me into a nostalgic comics-reading phase for the first time in about 15 years (it was something I shared with my late dad, who wore one of the first Watchmen T-shirts, which I always thought was cool) and I've realised that I know all the key names and characters but I'm pretty foggy on how they all join up and what happened when.

Getting back to Chabon, the only one I haven't enjoyed is Summerland, which had too much whimsy and baseball for my liking. Don't know why I read it in the first place. And The Final Solution's clever but malnourishingly slight. K&C, Wonder Boys and Yiddish are all terrific. Werewolves in Their Youth has got some fun genre stuff, especially the horror story. Pittsburgh's about as good as any self-consciously quirky coming-of-age story can be.

His short stories are probably his most "literary" work; he's got several marvelous ones.

nd Jonathan Ross's amazing Steve Ditko doc,

ooh yeah this is great. Ditko is such a weirdo.

It seems weird to see K&C as a book "about" comics - it's about Jewish identity and homosexuality and the immigrant experience, and how comic books, on some levels, articulated outsiderness and a craving for justice. But comics are a way in to the characters and ideas, not the whole point at all.

I get this, really I do. And comics make a natural backdrop for the Jewish immigrant experience (homosexuality, uh not so much) given how inextricably the two are bound up... but reflecting on it, I think it was the way he shoehorned them together that rubbed me the wrong way. As a geek I zeroed in on how the comics stuff was being squashed and tailored to fit this narrative that wasn't really about comics that made me think "wow somebody who doesn't know anything about comics is going to get the COMPLETELY wrong impression of how this stuff actually happened..." But then most readers wouldn't care... the entire medium of comics relegated to the ghetto yet again, backgrounded in the service of a "superior" medium like the "serious" novel. blech.

As far as histories go, I haven't really ever read one that I love but I am very VERY anxious to read Mark Evanier's biography of Jack Kirby and would recommend that sight unseen, just being familiar with Kirby's life story and Evanier's commitment to the man.

I was just going to recommend the Evanier book.

Kirby is a great example really, his life story is pretty amazing (and is drawn on heavily in K&C) and his career spanned decades and covered so much territory - I wish people knew more about him and less about Chabon lolz

K&C is great when it's a coming-of-age novel - the details of the romance with the bohemian girl, all that. Starts to bog down when it wants to tackle bigger issues, gets into the Antarctica hoo-ha.

the entire medium of comics relegated to the ghetto yet again, backgrounded in the service of a "superior" medium like the "serious" novel.

you say this as if, in the context of a novel, there were any real competition of value between comics and novels

actually, never mind, that's not really a fair criticism -- you seem to be saying that you find the history of comics too rich/important to be loosely used as a point of fiction, which is fair (and I get the feeling you're mostly reacting to how readers of the fiction would value those things, which is half-fair, though it's not really a reflection on Chabon) ... but this could become a problematic stance if you ever ran into, say, a bunch of scientists who loathed comics because they felt like the real workings of radioactivity were too rich/important to be loosely used as a point of illustrated fiction

I always read the marginalization of comics in K&C as a broader metaphor for the immigrant experience, and the kind of acculturation and assimilation demanded of Jewish immigrants. So it made sense in the context of the book that Kavaliar would be attracted to comics - they're underdogs just like him. And it makes sense that the novel would seem to devalue comics, since it's apart of the larger critique. (Tho maybe there's something unintentional about the novel eclipsing the comic, that may make the same point accidently.)

but this could become a problematic stance if you ever ran into, say, a bunch of scientists who loathed comics because they felt like the real workings of radioactivity were too rich/important to be loosely used as a point of illustrated fiction

a kinda funny analogy could be made here to, say, a novel with particle physics as the background that featured two sloppily rendered main characters who were amalgams of Bohr, Boehm, Feynman, Einstein, etc. while muddling up the sequence of events and misrepresenting their various positions and contributions. Someone who didn't know anything about physics might just read it and say "lolz scientists", someone who was familiar with physics would be appalled.

I get the feeling you're mostly reacting to how readers of the fiction would value those things, which is half-fair, though it's not really a reflection on Chabon

this is also true because several people recommended it to me as "a great novel about comics" - which is really their mistake and not the author's. But I can't help feeling it was marketed and pushed that way.

comics are so cramped and artless its not a surprise that a book that takes influence from them is the same but mysteries of pittsburgh is really good imo

I didn't even like the book much, but I have some resistance to that. Or at least I want to separate the possibility that Chabon was sloppy/uninformed about the history of comics from the complaint that he took liberties with it -- those are really different things, right?

Like I take issue with the word "misrepresenting" -- how does one "misrepresent" in this kind of fiction? He's not writing a non-fiction history of comics, and he's not to my knowledge writing an allegory about the people involved, so ... why precisely is it a point against a work of fiction to take liberties with positions/contributions/timelines? Is there an attitude here that fiction has to legitimize itself via secretly teaching us something true and non-fictional about the world?

I also don't see how something can't be "about comics" in ways that don't have to do with rigorous factual representation of the history of comics -- surely it can be about comics in a non-informational sense, yes?

I mean, I would certainly be distracted and offput if I read a novel doing that about some topic I felt close to or knew a lot about -- but if, in the end, I felt like the author had something non-factually great to say about the topic, I'm not sure how much I'd hold it against him/her.

I share Shakey's frustration with the widespread mulish dismissal of superhero comic books - the normally likeable critics in the Slate podcast on the Watchmen movie seemed to regard them as a lowbrow joke to be patronised or ignored - but that's not Chabon's problem. He's a fan, and he's intrigued by the characters that invented the form, and just because he plays fast and loose with the history it doesn't mean he's not respectful.

In my experience, people who enjoyed comics books in their youth grow up seeing them as part of the swim of popular culture and those that didn't regard them as a childish irrelevance not worthy of investigation. So they're bound to see something like K&C as "legitimising" a lowbrow artform, but I don't think Chabon felt that comics needed legitimising. Similarly, I don't like most sci-fi but I'm sure sci-fi fans get annoyed with all the adoration of Battlestar Galactica which argues that it's good despite its genre, but such a reception isn't Battlestar's fault and that kind of praise of K&C isn't Chabon's.

Or at least I want to separate the possibility that Chabon was sloppy/uninformed about the history of comics from the complaint that he took liberties with it -- those are really different things, right?

they are and there are plenty of details in the book indicating he is well informed. He was, as you say, taking liberties.

Like I take issue with the word "misrepresenting" -- how does one "misrepresent" in this kind of fiction? He's not writing a non-fiction history of comics, and he's not to my knowledge writing an allegory about the people involved, so... why precisely is it a point against a work of fiction to take liberties with positions/contributions/timelines? Is there an attitude here that fiction has to legitimize itself via secretly teaching us something true and non-fictional about the world?

I'm not trying to make a bigger point about some kind of hypothetical "rules" for fiction. I would appreciate refraining from this devolving into an argument about the purpose of literature. I am complaining about a specific instance here, ie, K&C reinforcing misinformation about comics, which by and large don't get any serious attention in the public sphere unless their contents are converted into another medium. A non-comics reader reads this book and the praise for it and gets the impression they are learning something about the history of comics (as well as Jews, the immigrant experience, homosexuality, etc.) And various readers of this book have conveyed this impression to me. The problem is the impression they are getting is distorted and, to me - as someone familiar with how much the actual creators of comics have been screwed over and unceremoniously forgotten and excluded from any serious public consideration over the years - it just really chafes me to see that reinforced. Take, for example, the central relationship of the book - you have the sensitive artiste (who draws the comics), and the fast-talking ideas guy (who writes them). This is based on the Shuster/Siegel and Kirby/Lee teams. Except in the case of Kirby and Lee (and Ditko and Lee, and really anybody and Lee) who gets credit for what is highly contentious (I'm of the personal opinion that Lee is a talentless hack and horrible person who took advantage of everybody he could and never had an original idea of his own. Subsequently he is rich and famous and his "collaborators" are largely poor, forgotten, and/or dead). So it irked me to see that particular collaboration mirrored in the book. And not only mirrored in the book, but compounded into a bizarre amalgam with specific details from all these other comics folks (Will Eisner, Bob Kane, etc.) It is just bizarre, for example, to present a single character who is both Will Eisner AND Jack Kirby, two guys who could not be further apart in terms of style and thematic obsessions and whatnot. It just rings false. There was, for me personally, a point where I could recognize too much of the source material in the novel and it distracted me because all I could think about was how stuff was being glossed over or simplified or distorted in the service of this larger narrative that I did not find particularly interesting or coherent.

I also don't see how something can't be "about comics" in ways that don't have to do with rigorous factual representation of the history of comics -- surely it can be about comics in a non-informational sense, yes?

sure, but... does this book actually do that? Its told like a pretty straight history of the medium as filtered through the two main characters, its entire construction is like a biography.

OK, but is there a version of comics history that would make sense in story terms as a narrative about two people? I can't imagine that versions of Lee and Ditko - a shallow opportunist (some say) and a Randian weirdo - would have made the right kind of central relationship for this book.

Dunno if the book actually does that, since I could not bring myself to spend much time with it; I had a bad reaction somewhere.

I'm just skeptical of the idea that it's the job of a work of fiction to redress or remedy perceived failures in the public appreciation of comic-book history -- and even if it is, I'd make the guess that Chabon did more good on that front than harm. Like in terms of this:

A non-comics reader reads this book and the praise for it and gets the impression they are learning something about the history of comics

... I would guess that they probably have, even if it's a fast-and-loose spirit-of-the-thing kind of learning, right? Plus also I have a hard time attaching the complaint to this book in particular, and not as a larger habit -- people read a book from another country and feel like they've learned something about that country; people read a book about scientists and feel that they've learned something about science; etc. -- this is generally actually true, I think, the learning part ... but the tendency to think that you learned about X country (as opposed to X writer's vision of X country) is common to a whole lot of things beyond this book

OK, but is there a version of comics history that would make sense in story terms as a narrative about two people? I can't imagine that versions of Lee and Ditko - a shallow opportunist (some say) and a Randian weirdo - would have made the right kind of central relationship for this book.

I think the Shuster/Siegel one would work - Chabon's problem is that he doesn't restrict it to just those two, he throws in all these other people so that as the book goes on, these two characters somehow absorb characteristics of an ever widening group of pretty disparate people. It just becomes incoherent and obnoxious.

(lolz would totally read a book about Ditko as long as it was written by Ayn Rand hahahaha)

man Rand would have had a field day with Ditko as the protagonist and Lee as the evil leech

i think some people do read books in that way nabisco, but i don't think everyone does. i think people read in different ways. i never read fiction to learn about stuff--like i've read Moby Dick (and K&C) but I couldn't really tell you about what it's like to be a whaler (or what it's like to be a comic book guy).

I mean I think readers are well aware, with a book like this, that the entire history of comics does not actually hinge on two characters, and that a larger sweep of a story, full of various people's thoughts and impulses, is being condensed, for the sake of a larger narrative goal, into one arc. (If those readers actually wanted to know details about the history of comics, they would dive into non-fiction about the history of comics; but they don't, so they don't; they're interested in Chabon telling a story and drawing some larger meaning or larger connections from comics as a history.)

xpost - yes, definitely, Que, most people read fiction as a fiction; sometimes there is that tic, though, where you've been really immersed in a piece of fiction and feel like you know something about something -- which you do, actually, you just know it filtered through a particular author's vision of it!

Chabon's problem is that he doesn't restrict it to just those two, he throws in all these other people so that as the book goes on, these two characters somehow absorb characteristics of an ever widening group of pretty disparate people. It just becomes incoherent and obnoxious.

how is this a problem???? i mean as a normal person that doesnt care about comics the characters seemed pretty coherent its not like this was a bilbiography of some lame comics guy

Siegel and Shuster's experience totally fits Chabon's purposes (well, not the homosexuality angle) - why he felt the story had to continue beyond their story and continue through the 50s and 60s, with these guys subsequently creating a Batman-like character and inventing the graphic novel form etc. is inexplicable (that graphic novel format didn't even exist prior to the 80s!) It was like he wanted to cover all that comics history and wasn't done exploring his own themes so he just started piling more and more stuff on in an increasingly incoherent manner. It was just unnecessary.

x-posts

Actually, if you're going to harp on Chabon's choice of compression of history, you could get your facts straight; the first US "graphic novel" (obviously, in Europe their are precedents like Tintin and the like) was Blackmark, which came out in '71 (or His Name Is... Savage in '68). The term might not have been popularized until after Eisner's late 70s work, but the "published as a book" concept had been going for a while.

Also, why complain that he has early superhero comics creators have a resurgence in the 50s or later? Adding a revival to their story rings true because it happened for a number of guys (Kirby, Lee, Everett, Sprang, Swan, etc).

K & C are an amalgam, a riff on the giants of early comics. As a comic nerd, I appreciated it; it was just like the heroes themselves, a Superman/Captain Marvel kind of thing.

you could get your facts straight; the first US "graphic novel" (obviously, in Europe their are precedents like Tintin and the like) was Blackmark, which came out in '71 (or His Name Is... Savage in '68).

lolz I knew someone was gonna zing me for that

but come on the Golem book in K&C is an obvious nod to Maus

Was it? Wasn't Golem written by K -- a Holocaust survivor, while Maus is dealing with the legacy of the Holocaust and by the son of a survivor? I read Golem more like Superman -- a fantastic way of dealing with this oppressive personal history that couldn't be squared away. Just like the Golem protects the Jews of Prague (and in some legends/retellings, actually came back to life during the Holocaust), Superman fights for truth, justice and kicking Nazi ass. Etc. I think IMHO that Golem = Maus is a total misreading.

(Tho I haven't read K&C in awhile, and may be misremembering it.)

the stylistic descriptors Chabon attributes to the Golem book - the lack of dialogue, more abstract, impressionistic drawing style, abandonment of conventional comic book narrative structure, coupled with the Holocaust subject matter - made me think he was referencing Maus.

(doesn't he also specify that Golem is in b&w, like Maus?)

But Maus didn't lack dialogue at all. It's positively chatty in many places. And I wouldn't call the drawing style impressionistic (which strikes me more as a Chagall reference than the animal-symbolism of Maus). IDK, seems like a tenuous connection.

(Which might, btw, be the risk in trying to read K&C as a direct analogue to real comic events. Kavaliar writing a Holocaust book would have to mean significantly different things than when Spiegelman did. Esp. since Maus is so much about reconstructing memory from previous generations -- understanding our distant parents -- understanding events we never experienced ourself. Isn't the entire animal-motif a way of getting at our/Spiegalman's distance from these events? And Kavaliar actually experienced these events - was stricken melancholic from them for the rest of his life... how could they be similar texts?)

I always pictured the Golem as something like the works of Lynn Ward or Kathe Kollwitz. Not very Maus-like at all.

well, as I've said, as with every other comics-related element in K&C, there are no direct analogs - Chabon mashes a bunch of different stuff together in the service of his own narrative. For ex. The Escapist is similar to Superman in terms of how he's created, the character's impact on the culture, the role he plays, etc. but the character varies from Superman in significant ways.

x-post

dude is just a bad writer that's all

Which might, btw, be the risk in trying to read K&C as a direct analogue to real comic events

^^ this! I didn't mean to sound overly philosophical about "job of fiction" stuff above, but this just strikes me as something basic about expectations of the form.

(But maybe part of the issue here is Chabon striking out, in some readers' opinion, in the balancing you do among narrative, fan-service, condensation, hidden winks to people already steeped in the material you're covering, etc. etc. etc. -- whatever knowingness gets used around those things)

K&C is no Housekeeping, but I'm not sure how you can call him a "bad writer." XP

The Escapist is based on Jim Steranko, which is probably my favorite piece of comic nerd arcana in K & C.

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Also, why complain that he has early superhero comics creators have a resurgence in the 50s or later?

also I never addressed this - its not that he has them have a resurgence, its that he has them REINVENT the form (ie, writing an impressionistic, deeply personal, emotionally charged, unconventional graphic novel) in the fucking 50s. come on now. Even Eisner didn't get around to that until Contract With God, as noted.

I just type the words in this here box xp

shakey bro the book is not, um, true, you know, its, like, fiction

I'm just saying it doesn't make sense. Its like having a book about Beethoven where he invents multitrack recording.

well probably that book wouldnt be about beethoven, so much as a book, about a composer, who invents multitrack recording, who also shares some qualities with beethoven

i never in my life expected to hear a comics fan say "come on now" about alleged plausibility issues in a novel

well probably that book wouldnt be about beethoven, so much as a book, about a composer, who invents multitrack recording, who also shares some qualities with beethoven

lolz okay you win

i never in my life expected to hear a comics fan say "come on now" about alleged plausibility issues in a novel

okay now you are making me angry

Relax with Rocket Raccoon in this week's GotG.

okay now you are making me angry

and... we wouldn't like you if you were angry?

anyways, still love this guy's stuff. werewolves in our youth made me swoon, the children's fantasy novel involving baseball is a little bloated and uneven, but still charming. and yiddish policemen was scads of fun, and a touch gripping.

also, spiderman 2 rooled.

Haha I'm sorry, Shakey, I was distinctly trying not to get on your case upthread because I can see what's frustrating you about it, it definitely makes sense -- there's just some indescribable thing about it that strikes me as weird or funny, like ... it's fiction! That is cool, though, it's totally interesting to hear that's what got to you about it, because I would otherwise not really know how the thing read to someone who was really into comics.

Haha that was also kind of an un-pass-uppable combination of mild zing + actual sentiment -- totally not meant meanly, it's just funny

which chabon short stories do people love? I have werewolves and never really got into it, but I love all of his other "major" works.

I would otherwise not really know how the thing read to someone who was really into comics.

I'm really into comics and know publishing history until my balls ache, and Shakey is mad rong

(.......to not be saying "ah, it just bugged me, I know it's idiosyncratic but it just put me off because I didn't like the choices he made in writing a fiction")

I thought that was what I was saying

I love the comics and know lots about them and their history and loved K+C.

also I never addressed this - its not that he has them have a resurgence, its that he has them REINVENT the form (ie, writing an impressionistic, deeply personal, emotionally charged, unconventional graphic novel) in the fucking 50s. come on now. Even Eisner didn't get around to that until Contract With God, as noted.

This was bouncing around in my head and suddenly - Krigstein's "Master Race" and the E.C. War Comics! The subject matter, the unconventional storytelling, etc. Combine that with the wood cut novels Ward did in the twenties and thirties and Kollwitz' war prints and the Golem is born. That it was a single long piece is probably the most radical departure, but again, Ward's woodcut novels predate.

Basically, I'm with Dan on this one - love, know and love, respectively.

I love the comics and know lots about them and their history and loved K+C.

― dan selzer, Thursday, March 26, 2009 11:02 AM (Yesterday)

^^^^^^

I can't argue that the Krigstein piece is brilliant and way ahead of its time. "Master Race" is like "Top 10 Greatest/Most Important Comics Stories of the 20th Century" material.

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I just can't believe I didn't think of it right away! Too much stuff in the old cranium.

and what can I say, this is one of those cases where my real-life demographic sampling doesn't match up with the internet. Entirely content to accept my own prejudices re: K&C as being personal.

also fwiw I had never heard of Ward or his woodcuts before that's all v. interesting news to me

Definitely check them out; great American expressionist work. My wife was a print maker in college so I got my exposure there.

God's Man was pretty much the biggest go-to name for "list graphic novels earlier than Contract With God" arguments in the 80s and 90s

coen bros yiddish policeman's union?

Producer Scott Rudin purchased the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union in 2002, based on a one-and-a-half page proposal.[17] In February 2008, Rudin told The Guardian that a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen Brothers.[18] The Coen Brothers will begin working on the adaptation for Columbia Pictures after they complete filming of A Serious Man.[19]

has there been any updates since 2008?

was given Manhood For Amateurs as a gift last year, found myself really enjoying and admiring him as an essayist, but I'm having a really hard time mustering the enthusiasm to read any of his fiction.

apparently delayed til after true grit anyway wonder if it still happens

really loved kav & clay and yid pol pretty good but suffers by inevitable comparison - the only two I've read

love his fiction... mysteries of pittsburgh is excellent, as is wonder boys, and kav and clay is probably my favourite. his children's fantasy novel - the one about the baseball team - is a pleasure too, a little overlong but a great read.

does anyone know what happened to chabon's website? a bunch of years ago it used to have a bunch of writing on there and stuff iirc

i think shakey mo and john byrne might have the same objection to K&C

read wonder boys enjoyed it

http://twitter.com/#!/ayeletw/status/114002620800180225

*retweets* *to conservative nutjobs*

i can't remember, is there some 'thing' with michael chabon's ex-wife? i think i read that it was the subject of a chapter in one of his essay books maybe.

i can't quite decide which side i'm on between her & hadley

I like HF but it seems a bit contradictory to immediately retweet something you don't should have been made public in the first place.

you don't *think* should have been ...

i think shakey mo and john byrne might have the same objection to K&C

weird, I missed this... I shudder to think what I have in common with John Byrne

anyway I totally hate this guy

does Byrne complain about teh gay or what

not while I'm eating

I like HF but it seems a bit contradictory to immediately retweet something you don't should have been made public in the first place.

aw no i don't think so, i don't know that a conscientious effort not to add to the proliferation of something on twitter would be noticeable, you know. it becoming hadley's mission to withhold that info. think it's just an amusing conflict because through HF's lens - like, people & their twitter activity & personas - it's something to flag up, but AW's right that it shouldn't be a big deal.

i read that elif batuman takedown of contemporary american literature (short stories) recently, in which kavalier and clay crops up at the end. it proves a lot of her points but i remember being absorbed. i wonder whether the book that drove him to be all THIS ONE IS FOR DILLA @ the atlantic will be good or not

'shouldn't be a big deal' = shouldn't be the sort of the thing in any way restricted from casual mention/a taboo etc

tweet gone--what is this all about then?

someone with cervical cancer? fuck if I know

I just started reading Kavalier & Clay last night. That's some really engaging writing - fluid and easy to read, but never boring.

Several months after finishing Kavalier & Clay, I find myself really pining to somehow return to its world. I love it unequivocally, and at risk of sounding like some sad EL James fan, I actually miss the company of the characters. It's extremely rare that I'll be saddened (as opposed to relieved) on finishing a book of that length. My only problem was that the end is a bit weak and unfulfilling, particularly the parting gestures at the very end. Too bad, but still - I'd like to read another book that engages me this much.

Also... the Antarctica section is one of the best bits!

new essay on Finnegans Wake in the NYROB.

Several months after finishing Kavalier & Clay, I find myself really pining to somehow return to its world

There's a short sequel novella published in an issue of McSweeney's as a little seperate book:
“The Return of the Amazing Cavalieri: From Untold Tales of Kavalier & Clay.” McSweeney’s 7. McSweeney’s Quarterly, 2001.

it's the booklet on the far right: http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/70/b4/f3a3c0a398a0db7eb1960210.L.jpg

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is the only one I love -- such a time-and-place novel. Too bad the adaptation is wreteched; its acceptance of sexual ambivalence is if anything timelier than ever.

Oh wow... Where can I get hold of a copy of the novella?

(don't know what McSweeney's is - is this a US publication?)

love chabon. he scripted the best superhero movie, too (spiderman 2)

his short story collections are wonderful as well... and wonder boys... oh wonder boys...

I don't think much if any of Chabon's script remains in the completed Spider-Man 2

McSweeney's is a sometimes good, sometimes incredibly annoying lit magazine from the US: David Eggers and co--someone aptly described it as a magazine for writers who have read to much David Foster Wallace

You can get 2nd-hand copies of that edition at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/McSweeneys-No-Dave-editor-Eggers/dp/0970335563/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342135851&sr=8-1&keywords=mcsweeney%27s+7

Who's got a spotify playlist for all the awesome tracks name checked in Telegraph Avenue?

Someone beat me to it:
http://open.spotify.com/user/128607480/playlist/4FHhfwsPA41cG6KnqMsZxA

so is this his Fortress of Solitude? the one review i read made it sound exactly like it.

that playlist is great, thanks for sharing

it is a little reminiscent of fortress of solitude, but i like it more (not surprisingly, since i'm not a lethem fan). also it takes place in the present day (well, i think 2008 based on the cute obama cameo). some of it's a little too writer-y but it's a fun read. i'm not quite done with it yet though.

About 80 pages into Telegraph Avenue and really, really liking it so far. Definitely my favorite Chabon since Kavalier & Clay, though I never got around to his last one.

same here. really enjoying it.

Aww, I should have gone and seen him read and talk about it in DC tonight.

Finished Telegraph Avenue today, it took me ages but that was partly due to just not wanting to pick it up very often. I've only read Kavalier & Clay up until now (loved it) and can't work out if Chabon's writing style has got worse or if I'm just less receptive to it now.

Like there's all these lengthy sentences that coil around themselves and fit in a load of superfluous character detail (I became infuriated by the fourth time I was told what kind of shoes a character was wearing). And I love people like Pynchon and DFW who are kings of superfluous character detail but those guys write amazing sentences and Chabon doesn't really, so the effect here is just gloopy.

Suppose I'd have got more out of it if I cared that much about the characters but only Gwen and maybe Julie really held much interest. But I suddenly started to care towards the end as it was hurtling towards its conclusion but the ending was just... weak.

It's not a patch on The Fortress of Solitude but they're not really comparable, Lethem's book felt more realistic despite the flying dudes, Telegraph Avenue felt like an excuse to let some broadly likeable characters percolate around with a load of fetishised 70s cultural references for 400 pages.

The ending *was weak, I agree, and I thought the writing - which was mostly really engaging and charming, as chabon always is - seemed to slip a little. But I really enjoyed it, fetishisation and all - I mean, I think it walked a thin line between fetishising 70s cultural reference points, and depicting a very real subsect who fetishise 70s cultural references. I've enjoyed most of Chabon's post-Kavalier work, but they've felt minor for the most part, genre exercises by a writer at leisure to play around. Telegraph Avenue felt like his first "Michael Chabon" novel in a while, and it delivered that, even if it didn't entirely satisfy elsewhere.